Will Rogers did not write this. Quote Investigator traces the earliest known instance to a syndicated column of one-line jokes, “Tom Sims Says,” printed on 7 March 1925 in papers including The Sheboygan Press of Wisconsin and The Indianapolis Times of Indiana, and concludes that “Tom Sims is the most likely creator of this quip.” The Will Rogers credit is first documented in Forbes on 15 November 1970 — thirty-five years after Rogers died.
“Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there” Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. — most likely Tom Sims, in his syndicated column "Tom Sims Says," 7 March 1925; not Will Rogers, who was first credited only in 1970 (per Quote Investigator)
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Will Rogers. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.
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In context
Evoking the world of Tom Sims — syndicated NEA columnist of the 1920s. Theme: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The earliest documented source
Most likely creator
Tom Sims
Earliest citation
“Tom Sims Says,” 7 March 1925
Where it ran
The Sheboygan Press (Wisconsin), p. 24, and The Indianapolis Times (Indiana), p. 4 — syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association
Popular (wrong) credit
Will Rogers — first documented in Forbes, 15 November 1970
The straight and narrow path is plenty wide for its traffic. Even if you are on the right track you will get run over if you just sit there. Love is blind. But there is always some friend who thinks he is an eye doctor.
Three consecutive items from the syndicated column “Tom Sims Says” of 7 March 1925, as transcribed by Quote Investigator — the earliest instance located anywhere. The line was one gag among several, not a maxim.
Anchor:Quote Investigator finds the earliest match in the syndicated column “Tom Sims Says” of 7 March 1925, printed in The Sheboygan Press of Wisconsin and The Indianapolis Times of Indiana, and states that “Tom Sims is the most likely creator of this quip.”
The joke spread and shed its author within a week: QI documents the same-day reprint headed “Smile-A-While” in The Saginaw News Courier, a 9 March 1925 printing in The Columbia Record credited only to the Newspaper Enterprise Association, and a 13 March 1925 reprint in The News-Herald of Franklin, Pennsylvania with an acknowledgement but no name.
The Will Rogers credit arrives long afterwards. Rogers died in 1935, per Wikipedia; the first Rogers ascription QI locates is a Forbes page of 15 November 1970, and QI concludes that “the time delay in both cases was excessive; hence, these two attributions were not substantive.”
Reading Wikiquote’s Will Rogers page confirms the line appears in neither its sourced quotations nor its Misattributed section — it has never had a foothold in the documented Rogers corpus at all.
✓Public domain
The wording originates in a United States newspaper column syndicated on 7 March 1925 — comfortably before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff — so the sentence itself is in the public domain. The later reprints, variants and celebrity attributions from 1970 onward create no new rights in a line already published in 1925.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How Will Rogers got the credit
This is the classic pattern for a magnet name: an ownerless newspaper quip, funny and folksy, drifts onto the most famous folksy American available. The line was in print for forty-five years before anyone thought to put Rogers’s name on it.
✕
The popular creditWill Rogers First seen 1970
Rogers died in 1935. The earliest Rogers ascription QI can find is a Forbes “Thoughts On the Business of Life” page of 15 November 1970, followed by a 29 November 1970 clothing-store advertisement in Allentown’s Sunday Call-Chronicle, then quotation books in 1977 and 1992. It is absent from the sourced and misattributed lists on Wikiquote’s Rogers page alike.
✕
A rival wrong creditMark Twain First seen 1984
Twain died in 1910. QI dates the first Twain credit to a 12 August 1984 Philadelphia Inquirer advertisement for Gwynedd-Mercy College, repeated in The Gazette of Montreal in May 1985 — seventy-four years after his death, and fifty-nine after the line was already in newsprint.
✕
A third claimantArthur Godfrey First seen 1975
Orlando’s Sentinel Star ran the line over the broadcaster’s name on 9 September 1975, per QI — a useful tell, since a saying that collects three unrelated celebrities in fifteen years almost never belongs to any of them.
✓The earliest documented instance is Tom Sims’s syndicated column “Tom Sims Says” of 7 March 1925, and Quote Investigator concludes that Sims “is the most likely creator of this quip” — not Will Rogers, not Mark Twain, not Arthur Godfrey.
Context
How an unsigned newspaper joke found a famous voice
The 1925 newspaper page ran on filler, and Tom Sims filed it by the column-inch: three or four unrelated one-liners a day, syndicated nationwide by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Quote Investigator shows how quickly a good one slipped its author — the same day it ran under Sims’s name in Sheboygan and Indianapolis, it appeared in Saginaw under the different heading “Smile-A-While”; two days later The Columbia Record printed it credited only to the syndicate; and one week later a Pennsylvania paper reprinted it with an acknowledgement and no author at all.
Once a saying is orphaned it needs a voice, and mid-century America had a stock one: the drawling cowboy philosopher. Nothing links the line to Will Rogers except that it sounds like him. Per QI’s trail, the first credit to Rogers is a Forbes “Thoughts On the Business of Life” page dated 15 November 1970, and from there it moved into a clothing-store advertisement two weeks later, then into the quotation dictionaries that make an attribution permanent.
Being on the right track is correct. But if you just stop there you’ll get run over.
Read the full story
Sims himself did not treat the line as scripture. QI records that in his 29 June 1925 column he simply rewrote it: “Being on the right track is correct. But if you just stop there you’ll get run over.” Other papers kept reshaping it too — “it’s probable you’ll get run over” in The Atlanta Constitution in December 1925, “you’re liable to get run over” in The Film Daily in January 1931 — which is exactly how folk sayings behave and exactly how single-author quotations do not.
Rogers was not the only famous name to collect the line. QI documents a 1975 credit to broadcaster Arthur Godfrey in Orlando’s Sentinel Star, and a 1984 Mark Twain credit in a Philadelphia college advertisement. Twain died in 1910, which puts that one seventy-four years past the possible.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
American newspaper humorist · syndicated NEA columnist of the 1920s
Tom Sims wrote “Tom Sims Says,” a column of miscellaneous jokes and observations distributed to American newspapers in the 1920s by the Newspaper Enterprise Association — the kind of daily filler that quietly supplied the language with a great many of its proverbs. Quote Investigator gives no biography of him, but the NEA humorist of that name is almost certainly the Tom Sims whom comics reference works date 1896–1972 and credit as the writer who took over the Thimble Theatre (Popeye) strip after E. C. Segar’s death in 1938. Either way, the line belongs to a working columnist filing copy by the inch, not to the famous humorist it drifted onto forty-five years later.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented citation
Tom Sims, “Tom Sims Says,” The Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin), 7 March 1925, quote page 24 — the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Even If You Are On the Right Track You Will Get Run Over If You Just Sit There,” 26 January 2025.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/even-if-youre-on-the-right-track-youll-get-run-over-if-you/